THE COMMON OX. 543 



she goeth with calf, that the common people say a cow and 

 a queen have both one time."* At the Oxford meeting of 

 the Agricultural Society, in July 1839, Earl Spencer expressed 

 his conviction, from observations which he had made on the 

 period of gestation of 764 cows, that it lasts ten months 

 and four days. Lawrence, the celebrated physiologist, correctly 

 observes that cows kept in towns, and other animals deprived 

 of their healthful exercise, and accustomed to unnatural food 

 and habits, often have difficult and painful parturition. The 

 cow usually brings forth only one calf, not unfrequently two, 

 but rarely more. In the Nouveau Bulletin des Sciences, it is related 

 that, in 1817, a cow brought forth four cow-calves at a birth j 

 in 1818, two cow-calves and one bull-calf ; and in 1819, two 

 cow-calves -, and she nurtured them all herself, except two of 

 the first birth. Thus in three successive years she produced 

 nine calves. It is a prevalent notion that when a cow produces 

 twins consisting of a bull-calf and a cow-calf, the latter, then 

 called a free-martin, is always barren. John Hunter says, in 

 the second edition of his Observations on the Animal Economy, 

 that he had met with exceptions to the rule ; and it is related 

 in the Magazine of Natural History (vol. v. p. 765), that a cow 

 belonging to Mr. J. Holroyd, of Withers, near Leeds, brought 

 forth twins of opposite sexes, and that these bred together, 

 the twin cow brought forth a bull-calf, and she regularly 

 had calves for six or seven years afterwards. In the same 

 journal (vol. vi. p. 78), Mr. J. G. Tatem records that at Hill 

 Farm, about a mile from Wycombe, a small polled cow, 

 belonging to Mr. Reuben Allen, produced three cow-calves, in 

 the beginning of January 1828, which were reared, and each 

 of them calved twice. 



The reader has probably often witnessed proofs of the 

 cow's attachment to her offspring. Mr. Jesse relates that a 

 cow was driven from the head-keeper's yard at Bushy Park 

 to Smithfield, and sold at the latter place 3 but early the next 

 morning she was found at the yard gate, having made her 



* Herebatch's Husbandrie, Englished by Barnaby Googe (1586), p. 127. 



